I Miss the Mammoths

I Miss the Mammoths

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

 

Recently, there seem to have been a lot of stories in the media about the remarkable intelligence of elephants. Scarcely a week goes by without a new science story about how elephants are among the few non-human creatures that are self-aware, about their superb communication skills, about the ways in which they care for one another, or about their wonderful memories (it is true: an elephant never forgets). Whenever I see these stories I feel wistful, contemplating the elephants that used to live around here. I imagine how they wandered across the landscape, using their big brains as they communicated about food and predators.

If you are here in still-snowy Winnipeg, you might wonder if I am feeling OK, or you would at least think “what does this have to do with our local situation?” After all, wild elephants live a very long way away, in warm parts of Africa and Asia. Our lack of living elephants is, however, a disparity of time rather than one of geography. Geologically speaking, it is just the blink of an eye since the time when this area was regularly visited by herds of elephants.

A hand drawn illustration of a mammoth molar from above.

Crown view of a woolly mammoth molar from Bird, northern Manitoba (specimen V-1739; illustration by Debbie Thompson)

Part of an aged fossilized pelvis in a storage container.

Partial mammoth pelvis from southeastern Manitoba (specimen V-2640; scale is in centimetres and inches).

Side view of a large mammoth molar with a flat upper and jagged "roots" along the bottom.

Side view of a mammoth molar from southeastern Manitoba (specimen V-2554; scale is in centimetres).

I am speaking, of course, about mammoths. Although woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) are better-known from Ice Age (Pleistocene) deposits in Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon, many examples have been found across the Canadian Prairies. Quite a few mammoth bones and teeth have been collected in Manitoba, along with the occasional tooth belonging to their distant cousin the American mastodon (Mammut americanum).

A portion of a long, aged mammoth tusk.

Here at the Museum we have mammoth teeth, vertebrae, limb bones, jaws, and other pieces, collected from many different sites in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Nearly all of these have been found separately in glacial deposits, and there is good evidence that they had been transported and abraded before they were finally deposited. Most of them are not mineralized; they are composed of the original bone and tooth material that was preserved in sand and gravel far below the water table. Some of the bones were still so “fresh” that they stank of rotting mammoth when we started to dry them out for preservation.

Sadly we have not yet found any more complete skeletons, but the fossils we have give excellent evidence that these animals were widespread in this region. They were probably common during the interglacial warm spells, those intervals of milder conditions when the ice sheets receded from this region.

 

Image: An incomplete mammoth tusk found northeast of Transcona (Winnipeg), Manitoba (specimen V-209).

Some of our mammoth bones are from sites where associated wood material has been dated to about 40,000 years old, so they date from well before the end of the Ice Age. The last mammoths in North America, however, became extinct about 10,000 years ago, and the very last ones in the world lived on Wrangel Island, Siberia, until just 4,000 years ago (by which time the Egyptians had already constructed some of their pyramids!). We don’t really know why mammoths became extinct, but there seem to have been several factors involved: climate change at the end of the Ice Age and increased hunting by human populations may have been the major causes.

Since the mammoth is often reconstructed as a hairy creature with a “primordial” sort of appearance, you might think that it was not really that similar to modern elephants, but modern scientific information tells us otherwise. We have long known that the teeth and bones of mammoths indicate an affinity to Asian elephants (genus Elephas). Asian elephant teeth, for instance, are much more like mammoth teeth than they are like the distinctive teeth of African elephants (genus Loxodonta). Recently, genetic studies have confirmed the similarity and shared ancestry of mammoths and Asian elephants. Mammoths and Asian elephants shared an ancestor about 5.8-7.8 million years ago, while that shared ancestor diverged from African elephants 6.6-8.8 million years ago.

 

Image: A mammoth scapula (shoulder blade) from southeastern Manitoba (V-2639).

Many of the new things we are learning about elephant behaviour seem to apply to both Asian and African elephants. Given what we now know about evolutionary relationships, it must be assumed that mammoths would have had the same sort of intelligence and behavioural traits, and it is possible that even mastodons were somewhat similar. The new information on elephant intelligence is allowing mammoths to be well understood as “living” creatures, even if the attempts to clone them are unsuccessful.

It is saddening that we came so very close, geologically, to seeing those herds of mammoths. Whenever I look at those fossils, whenever I contemplate the tusk of a huge adult or the jaw of a baby mammoth, I miss the animals.

Chris Kelekis and His Family Restaurant

The C. Kelekis Restaurant, a Winnipeg icon renowned as one of the finest diners on the prairies, closed in 2013 after 81 years of service. Located on Main St., it was an eatery that provided more than just good fries: there was always a chance you would meet a friend. The founder of the restaurant was Chris Kelekis (1886-1957). He immigrated from Triglia, a Greek settlement in Turkey, in 1913 following his beloved Magdeline Alaglou, who came with her brother and sister-in-law. After first living in Montreal, Chris and Magdeline moved to Winnipeg in 1918 and eventually had eight children, all of whom were involved in the restaurant in one way or another.

Close-up on the face in an oil-portrait of an older man with glasses and a moustache wearing a suit and tie.

Chris (originally Chrystomis) first pushed a cart selling peanuts and popcorn at various events, and eventually sold chips from a Model T Ford truck, on the same spot where the restaurant was eventually located in the early 1940s, 1100 Main St. It was expanded in 1955, and the rest is history.

A year ago the Kelekis family donated a number of items from the restaurant to the museum, including a collection of dinner ware, their well-used toaster, a framed print of Queen Elizabeth II that had been on the wall since the 1950s, and a menu (also from the ‘50s). A painting of Chris Kelekis, featured here, was also donated.

 

Image: Oil portrait of Chris Kelekis, date unknown. The Kelekis family had asked for a photograph of their father to be enlarged by a Winnipeg photography studio. As a surprise gift for a family the studio commissioned an artist to paint this portrait based on the photograph. Painting H9-38-85. Copyright The Manitoba Museum.

Thank you to the Kelekis family for the good food, the memories and the donation of artifacts.

Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Curator of History

Roland Sawatzky joined The Manitoba Museum in 2011. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Winnipeg, M.A. in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina, and Ph.D. in Archaeology…
Meet Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Diorama Details

By University of Winnipeg student Kristina Misurska

 

Hello, everyone! Kristina’s blog post for this week is going to be a bit different than some of her other posts:

Over Reading Week I went to a conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so I didn’t start any new research. Most of my work since my last blog post has been focused on continuing to figure out what is going to be involved with the QR code project, so I thought I would instead take this opportunity to blog a bit about the diorama itself.

Two figures in a miniature diorama winter scene, wearing traditional winter gear and with bundles on their backs.

The diorama is an astounding piece of work. Betsy Thorsteinson, an extremely talented artist, along with her skilled group of volunteers, put an incredible amount of detail into the diorama. The result of all their hard work is a diorama that, from afar, looks as if it could be a photograph of a real-life fishing camp. Taken as a whole, the diorama is beautiful.

To fully appreciate the amount of effort that went into the creation of the display, however, it helps to take a closer look. To that end, two separate monocles, or monoculars, are provided with the diorama so that visitors can get a close-up view of some of the details. The monocle lets viewers zoom in on different areas and see food being prepared in pottery vessels, birds flying amongst trees, and fish being smoked over fires.  The monocles help to focus on the thought and precision that went into the display. From the figurines of the family, to the branches of the trees, to the smoke rising from the campfires, every detail tells a story.

 

Image: Closeup of winter travelling scene, Aschkibokahn Diorama

The monocles help visitors to zoom in on areas that make them curious. This parallels what I am hoping to accomplish with my project –  to give visitors the option of learning more about the present-day site, along with seeing the bigger picture of the site.

That’s all for this week! Please check back next week to see how my project progresses.

Where the Dead Things Are

Recently, Melissa Pearn, our Cataloguer of Natural History collections went on maternity leave. She wrote this blog entry before she left.

 

As a Natural History cataloguer, I have the opportunity to work with some very interesting specimens. I love that my job involves all three areas of natural history – botany, zoology (mostly entomology), and palaeontology/geology. Having studied pollination and reproduction of Lady’s Slipper orchids for my Master’s thesis, I especially enjoy working with the botanical and entomological specimens. It’s fascinating to get to see some of the plants and insects that I have heard or read about, but have never had the opportunity to see in nature.

I’ve recently been cataloguing an interesting collection of Manitoba insects. The specimens were collected in the 1920’s and 1930’s, in places such as Victoria Beach and Winnipeg (especially Transcona). Not only is the collection fascinating because of its age and local origins, but also because of its diversity. Many of the specimens belong to the Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), but the collection also includes insects from 11 other groups such as Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps), Coleoptera (beetles), Diptera (flies), Hemiptera (the true bugs), and Odonata (dragonflies), among others.

The collection was assembled by Manitoban naturalist and entomologist George Shirley Brooks. He was born in Wrentham, Surrey, England in 1872 and came to Manitoba around 1913. He was not only a founding member and president (1932-1934) of the Natural History Society of Manitoba, but also co-founder of The Manitoba Museum and author of “Checklist of the Butterflies of Manitoba”. He died in Winnipeg on October 20, 1947 and is buried at Brookside Cemetery.

Older collections such as this one are very valuable for the information that they contain. Because many specimens have a collection date and location, they can help researchers to evaluate and determine population trends over time, or to determine the status of rare species for example. In order to maintain the integrity of these types of collections, proper storage and handling are very important. In Natural History, specimens are stored in a collections room that is controlled to create just the right temperature, light, and humidity conditions. Under less than ideal conditions, or when on display for long periods of time, specimens can become altered, as can be seen with the faded coloring of some of the moths and butterflies in the Brooks collection.

An open storage drawer containing a variety of pinned insect specimens.

Insect case with Hymenopterans (bees, wasps), Dipterans (flies) and Hemipterans (true bugs).

An open storage drawer containing a variety of pinned insects including moths and dragonflies.

Storage case with insect groups Lepidoptera (moths) and Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies).

Two pinned Luna Moths with distinct colouration differences. the wings of the moth on the left is faded nearly to white, whereas the one on the right has green wings.

Two Luna Moth specimens. Though approximately the same age, the one on the left has become severely faded.

NOTE: Melissa had a healthy baby girl on Feb. 3. She is named Ivy. The Museum staff wish her family all the best.